


Somewhere Between Then and Now

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, House Hunting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 22:18:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14578839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: Zach is moving back to LA, and Chris accompanies him on some home tours.





	Somewhere Between Then and Now

**Author's Note:**

> This is a belated Pinto de Mayo fic, based on a prompt from @seepunkrun: "Zach looking at real estate for his move back to L.A. Chris…'helping.'"

“You can wait in the car, you know,” Zach says, glancing at Chris with his hand hovering over the door handle. “This won’t take too long.”

“What? And let you have all the fun?” Chris’s eyes are inscrutable behind his sunglasses, but he’s grinning from ear to ear, too wide for Zach’s liking.

Zach rolls his eyes, refusing to be charmed. “Since when is house hunting fun?”

But Chris is already swinging open the door, bounding out of the car, and heading up the walk, raising his hand and calling a greeting to the realtor like they’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while rather than strangers who only met an hour or so ago.

Zach should have known the day would go like this. He and Chris made lunch plans a week ago, and when Zach called this morning to let him know his realtor had rescheduled a couple home tours on him last minute, Chris was typically accommodating, assuring Zach they could stop by the houses on the way, no harm, no foul. At the first house, Zach parked in the driveway and got out of the car, calling a “Back in a sec” over his shoulder only to find that Chris was already following him. Once inside, Chris never moved more than a foot from his shoulder, asked the realtor thoughtful questions that Zach would have forgotten, and was generally ten times more helpful and enthusiastic than one could ask a friend to be on such a tedious errand.

How could Zach have expected anything else? Chris has always been this way—courteous and comforting and willing to bend over backwards for anyone he cares about. It should make Zach feel good. It should make him feel _great_. But...

But.

Being back here has thrown Zach off kilter. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s living in some liminal space between the past and the present, and spending time with Chris only makes it worse, somehow. It was naive, perhaps, to think he could slip back into LA the same way he’d slip into a pair of well-worn jeans. He would merge his way back into Chris’s friend group. They would pick up all their old traditions—morning runs and late night movies and sitting out on Chris’s patio looking over the city and shooting the shit. Instead, things feel strange, just a little out of step, like Zach’s trying to jam a puzzle piece into a place it doesn’t quite fit. It’s possible that, after all that time away, _he_ is the one who doesn’t fit. 

Because Chris doesn’t seem to be feeling one bit of the discomfort Zach is feeling. At the front door, he is already grilling the realtor—a short, blonde woman with a soccer-mom haircut and an incredibly fake-looking smile—about the landscaping. “Did the previous owner have a gardner?”

“I imagine so,” Linda the Realtor says, staring down at the papers in her hand as if they will reveal the secrets of the universe to her—or at least the secret to getting Chris to shut up. “I can get that info for you.”

“It’s fine,” Zach says in a rush to be accomodating. “Let’s see the inside?”

Chris pushes his sunglasses up to rest on top of his head and gives Zach a look but mercifully doesn’t say another word as they step into the entryway. 

The house has great curb appeal, but it’s even more charming inside. It’s a true mid-century rancher, and the previous owners renovated but not so much that it’s been stripped of its vintage flair. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the sleek, modern apartment Zach left behind in New York, but to his surprise, he finds that comforting rather than off-putting. Maybe he really needs a change. Maybe this just reminds him of the house he grew up in, except twice the size and missing the brown shag carpeting and avocado fridge. 

“Are these floors real wood?” Chris asks as they head down the hallway toward the bedrooms. 

“Mhm. Original to the house,” Linda says. She has walked ahead of them, leaving to them to trail side-by-side down the narrow hallway, so close their hands brush, but now she turns and stops by a bedroom door to let them peek inside. “This is the smallest of the three bedrooms. It would make a great office, don’t you think? Or...” She pauses, eyeing Chris up and down and then flicking her eyes to Zach. “Or a nursery?”

A _nursery?_ Zach’s entire body lights up with the pins and needles of mortification. The noise he makes is meant to be noncommittal, but it comes out as more of a croak, and he has to duck quickly in the room to avoid looking at Chris, clocking his reaction. It certainly isn’t the realtor’s fault, after all, that she would assume they’re together. Chris has practically been inviting that exact assumption, what with his enthusiasm and overinvestment. And what grown man would bring a friend with him on a home tour? What are they even doing?

When he finally does get the nerve to meet Chris’s eyes, after the blood has stopped rushing in his ears, Chris only looks—of course—amused. “What do you think about that, huh?” he asks, gesturing expansively at the room. “Can you hear the pitter-patter of little feet?”

“You hush,” Zach hisses. This could be an office, he tells himself. Plenty of natural light, a window looking out over the pool and the overgrown sliver of yard beyond. He could put a desk right there against the wall, hire someone to construct an old-fashioned built-in for his knick-knacks and Noah and Harold’s ashes. 

Except now he can’t help but picture it with pastel walls—pale yellow or mint green. A cherry wood crib in one corner. A mobile with jungle animals.

This is why Chris _isn’t_. _Helping_.

They get through the next room and the spacious guest bathroom without incident, but Zach’s shoulders are tense the whole time. Linda jabbers on about nothing—”Lots of space in this hallway to hang pictures” and “You could add a skylight here to get a little more natural light”—and Chris eats it up, nodding and hmming and continually looking to Zach for comments that will never come. 

The master bedroom is a dream, with picture windows and a sliding glass door that leads out to the patio—a view of LA paradise on two sides and more than enough room for all of Zach’s oversized furniture plus a little yoga nook. The en suite bathroom is even better, all dark wood and green tile and a tub that might as well be a jacuzzi. For a moment, Zach sets aside the weirdness with Chris, the weirdness of being back in Los Angeles in the first place, and lets himself admit that this may be the one. He may have found the one.

“Can we have a minute to talk things over?” Chris asks from somewhere behind him. It takes him a moment to realize he’s talking to Linda.

“Of course,” Linda says, her expression a little too knowing in a way that makes Zach feel prickly all over again. And then she’s gone, leaving Zach and Chris alone in this ridiculous bathroom.

“You like it, don’t you?” Chris takes a couple steps closer and leans his hip against the sink, his smile painfully eager in a way that just doesn’t make sense no matter how Zach tries to figure it.

“Why are you so invested in this?” he blurts. Because it doesn’t feel—hasn’t felt this whole time—like Chris is just playing a role. The helpful friend. The amenable tag-along. No, Chris is taking this as seriously as if he were the one buying. And honestly, it’s more than a little embarrassing, given that Zach has been too focused on what Chris is doing to ask the questions he should be asking himself. Only now does he realize that he’s not sure if this house has air conditioning, or if the appliances are included, or if the pool is heated. Chris probably could answer all of those for him right now, if he asked.

“I’m not invested,” Chris says, but he’s rubbing the back of his neck and looking away, a clear sign he’s dissembling. What, he expects Zach not to know his tells after all these years? Current weirdness aside, Zach knows Chris right down to his bones, couldn’t un-know him if he wanted to.

“And what was with the nursery thing?” Zach asks, unable to stop himself from barreling onward. “You’re just going to let her assume—”

Chris shrugs a shoulder, his good humor trickling away slowly enough that Zach has time to regret it. “Who cares what she assumes, Zach? Hell, she might be more sympathetic now. Gotta find the cute gay couple their dream home, right?”

“Jesus.” Zach presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes. “I don’t understand you.”

Chris makes a frustrated sound and takes a step closer. There’s something wild in his eyes now, something that makes Zach want to shrink back—or maybe close the distance entirely, put his hands on Chris’s neck, soothe him. It’s always strange to see Chris wound up. He is the calm one, the laid-back one. He isn’t supposed to be looking at Zach like this.

“You’re here,” Chris says, jabbing a finger at Zach’s chest. “I didn’t think you’d ever come back, and now you have. So yeah, maybe I’m a little fucking invested. Sue me.”

“I’m not…” Zach shakes his head, still not quite getting it. “I’m not going anywhere now. You don’t have to…”

“You sure about that? Because you love New York, and this is a fucking far cry from New York!” 

Zach gapes at him, his mind churning so hard he forgets to breathe for a handful of seconds. “Is that what this is? You think if I don’t find a house I like, I’ll just...what? Decide it’s too much trouble and leave again?” That can’t possibly be what Chris thinks. That makes no _sense _. “I don’t have anything to go back to, Chris. The apartment’s gone, and…”__

__Everything tying him to New York is gone. He doesn’t have to tell Chris that, because Chris knows. Or should know. So why the fuck—_ _

__“I just want you to be happy,” Chris says. He sounds a little out of breath, like they’ve been fighting, or. Or he’s panicking. He must have imagined today would go a certain way, and now Zach’s screwing it up, throwing a wrench in the plan with his inability to just _be normal_._ _

__This time Zach does move closer and put a hand to the side of his neck, guided by instinct. “I’m going to be happy,” he says, making himself believe it as he says it. “I will be. I promise.”_ _

__Chris huffs a nervous laugh. He is tense under Zach’s hand, but he doesn’t move away, and that much, at least, is a comfort. “If you say so, man.”_ _

__Now would be the time for Zach to crack a joke. Or pull Chris into a hug. The old, pre-New York Zach would have, and the old Chris would have relished both. But somehow Zach doesn’t feel like either one of those things will quite feel right. Neither of them will slot that last puzzle piece into place, even though Zach feels like it’s so close to fitting. If he could just shave one the edges down somehow. If he could just turn it the right way._ _

__“I just—” Chris’s voice is suddenly hoarse, and he clears his throat, looking away again. “I missed you. A lot.”_ _

__It comes to Zach then, the kind of crazy, intrusive thought he might ignore if he was in his right mind, not worn out by a morning of walking through empty rooms and trying to picture himself inside them. He missed Chris too, and he misses him now, misses how close they used to be. In this brief moment of insanity—or maybe clarity—there’s only one way he can think of to get close enough to him again._ _

__Chris’s mouth is slack under Zach’s at first. His lips are chapped and his breath tastes like coffee and his stubble rasps a little too sharply against Zach’s chin. For a heartbeat or two, Zach thinks he misjudged this badly and ensured he’ll never feel at home here, around Chris, ever again. But then Chris makes a sound, something between a laugh and a sigh, and he starts kissing Zach back, hands curling around his waist to pull him closer._ _

__“You could have just said,” Zach says between kisses, against Chris’s mouth. “You could have told me—”_ _

__Didn’t know,” Chris gasps back, and then silences him by putting a hand to the back of his neck and pulling him in harder, their lips colliding bruisingly._ _

__Didn’t know, Zach thinks. Yeah, he didn’t know either, though perhaps he should have. But absence has a way of making things look rosy in a way you can’t trust, and if he longed for the old days, the days when Chris lived in walking distance, it was just because his view was distorted. Or so he thought. It turns out maybe he sucks at judging what’s good and what’s not, what he should want and what he shouldn’t._ _

__A soft _ahem_ behind them has them springing apart, twin looks of contrition on their faces as they turn to face Linda, who’s reappeared in the bathroom doorway._ _

__“So,” she says, raising her eyebrows at them, “do you two like this one?”_ _

__Before Zach can answer, before he can even open his mouth, Chris says, “Yeah, we like it a lot.”_ _

__This time Chris’s overzealousness isn’t annoying or awkward; it makes Zach feel every bit as warm as he should have felt all along. Without thinking, he reaches out and threads their fingers together, biting his lip to keep from smiling. “We do,” he confirms after a moment, looking at back at Linda. “Let’s talk about an offer.”_ _

__She turns to walk away again with a satisfied smile on her lips, and Chris is wearing almost the same smile when he pulls Zach close again and plants a kiss on his temple._ _

__“How did you know I don’t hate it?” Zach asks, rubbing a couple knuckles over the scruff on Chris’s jaw._ _

__“Because I know you.” Chris kisses him again, then pulls away to start backing his way out of the bathroom. In the doorway, his pauses, his hand hooked on the doorframe and grins. “Plus, this one’s like a five minute drive from my house, so I was never intending to let you have a say.”_ _

__Zach scoffs and lunges for him, but Chris is already way ahead of him, his laughter echoing down the hallway._ _

__Before Zach heads after him, he turns around and surveys the empty bedroom once more—the dark wood trim around the windows and sliding door, the palm fronds bobbing in the breeze outside—and yeah, he can see himself here. If he closes his eyes, he can see it so clearly, where before he knew it was a good house but he wasn’t confident he could be comfortable in it. The picture is complete now. Zach feels complete now._ _

__He turns and leaves the room, moving finally from the past to the present, following the sound of Chris’s voice._ _


End file.
